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07/26/2017 09:30 AM“I was healthy until I went to the hospital,” said Clara Bobienski Corrigan. “The worst thing you can do at our age is to go to the doctor’s because they’re bound to find something wrong with you. If you didn’t have anything wrong before, you will after you leave.”
Slowing down, the Red Socks, the Deep River Muster, and a pre-emptive warning about the dangers of going to the doctor were among some of the topics covered as three members of the Deep River High School Class of 1942 met for a reunion lunch at The Ivory in Deep River on July 17, 75 years since their graduation year. The group was brought together for the second time—having first reconnected last year—by Corrigan, who now lives in Pittsburg. Aurelia Negrelli Knox and Josephine Zaremba Koritkowski joined her; the fourth who planned on attending, Edie Heidtmann Machado, was unable to come.
Of their class, Corrigan and company contacted nine members across the country, though not everyone was able to make the trip. However, one thing was clear as the best friends since grade school sat down together poring over old photographs and yearbooks: Friendship knows no age.
“We walked to church every Sunday; we walked from Deep River to Chester,” said Knox. “We played sports and were in the same class together and were always right next to each other, except for one, maybe two years.”
Knox found her late husband in the yearbook—they were high school sweethearts—and conversation turned to what life used to be like. Asked what had changed, Corrigan and Knox thought that not much had, but there were far more people in town now than there used to have been. The stores have all changed, and the Piano Factory is now condominiums.
To Koritkowski, though, the changes have been more significant.
“Life has changed so much. The town, you’d hardly know it. They have done so much in our town. I think most of it was already done last year,” said Koritkowski. “We had a theater, but that got taken down. Most old things got taken down.”
Though smaller than Valley Regional High School is today, Deep River High School (which now houses Deep River Elementary School) was a well-regarded school in the area, and students attended from Winthrop, Old Saybrook, and Higganum. Graduation, proms, junior and senior dances, and tea dances, were held in the Town Hall, as the high school didn’t have a gym or an auditorium.
“We had field hockey and softball. It was a small school; we didn’t have football and basketball, they needed too much equipment,” said Corrigan. “At the end of the season, the boys’ soccer team would challenge the girl’s hockey team to a hockey game, but they never followed the rules. So, of course they always won. And then we would have cocoa, but they gave us a hard time.”
Graduating in 1942, these nonagenarians saw more of life than most of us manage to remember from our history classes, and had a lot to say on the many ways in which life has changed. World War II shaped their lives, even if things seemed to be safer in many ways. It left an impression on how they spent their time.
“It was a much kinder, gentler time, and the people were very nice. There wasn’t all the hate we have today, and it makes me very sad,” said Knox. “During the war, I was in Girl Scouts. I remember going out to Winthrop, and we used to sit out there and watch for planes. Every time they would go over, we had to call Boston. If you had a car, you had to tape your headlights halfway to direct the light down, and you had to pull your shades down, because the submarines used to go out in Long Island Sound. And so, especially in Saybrook, you had to keep your lights low. But it was a much nicer time I think. Everybody was friendly and nobody seemed to worry about if you had more than I had.”
“Life was so different in those days; I was in grade school before we had a telephone, before we had a radio or television or anything like that,” said Corrigan.
“We had party lines,” remembered Knox. “You could listen in on your neighbor’s conversation if you were nosey.”
Corrigan and Knox also remember a greater sense of freedom in their childhood than they see with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“We were so free to come and go as we pleased, well, with the great-grandchildren, they don’t go anywhere without a parent,” said Corrigan. “I used to walk down to the post office at 10 o’clock at night to mail letters, and never thought a thing of it.”
“The thing I find different about the Little League, because my boys played Little League, and maybe we were terrible parents, but we would take them and drop them off, and they would have their games,” said Knox. “The kids had their own games, and they had a coach of course, and they reasoned everything out if they had a problem. But now, the parents get more involved with the kids’ games and travel with them and fight their battles—I think they ought to go back to just let the kids play their Little League and go home and have dinner or something.”
Crime and drugs are also problems that they don’t remember seeing much of, but while they have some things that they don’t think have changed for the better, not everything they see in the world around them is bad.
“Children today are much more aware of what is going on in the world, and I don’t think they are all bad; I think most of them are very good. I do think that kids, when you see high school kids today, I do think they get much more involved,” said Corrigan. “I think the good is better than the bad.”
“Technologically, there is a lot of good, and the kids are very good with it,” said Knox. “I’m not a techie, I don’t have any of this stuff and I’m getting by without it.”
As for getting older, well, “It ain’t for the faint of heart,” laughed Knox. “No, I don’t mind it. I’m actually fairly healthy. But it’s just like a car; things wear out. But we all live alone. We all drive.”
“I joined a fitness club so I could stay fit, and I try to keep active,” said Corrigan. “I do a crossword puzzle every day to keep my mind going. And I have my family to keep me busy. As far as growing old—you can’t fight it. It’s going to happen. But I feel lucky I can still get around.”
In terms of whether or not there will be a 76th reunion, Knox said, “We’ll aim for it; that’s what we did last year.”
“It’s nice to see everybody, to get together and talk about the old times. At our age,” said Corrigan, “we go a year at a time.”